Alert readers will have noticed that we’ve been studying the UK government’s latest independence paper today. The 24-page booklet comes with a foreword from the Secretary of State for Portsmouth promising that it contains “the positive case for Scotland remaining in the United Kingdom”, so we thought it’d be fun to share some of our favourite snippets of positivity.

“An independent Scotland would need to apply to all international organisations it wished to join and establish its own domestic institutions. There are more than 200 UK public bodies that currently perform functions in Scotland – the government of an independent Scotland would need to decide how many of these would need to be replicated. Creating and running these institutions would have to be funded by Scottish taxpayers.”

There’ll be paperwork! And things will cost money! Yay!

“The UK Government spent £45 billion recapitalising the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in 2008, and the bank also received £275 billion of state guarantees and loans. In total this support would have been twice the size of the whole Scottish economy in that year, including North Sea oil.”

We’d be too wee and too poor! Woo!

“All three major UK political parties have ruled out a currency union because it would not be in the interests of the continuing UK or an independent Scotland. For an independent Scotland, a currency union would make it more difficult to adjust to economic challenges, as we have seen for European countries in the euro currency union.”

It’ll be hard! Who doesn’t enjoy hard work?

“The UK’s large domestic market, with one currency and one set of rules, allows businesses to trade freely across the whole of the UK benefiting businesses, workers and consumers. In 2011, Scotland sold goods and services to the other parts of the UK worth over £45.5 billion. This is double the amount we export to the rest of the world and four times as much as to the rest of the European Union combined.

This trade is supported by a common business framework that is the basis for every stage of a business from hiring employees, to borrowing money, to getting goods to market either online or on the high street.

Regardless of the choice of currency, independence would put an end to all of this.

It would mean businesses that work across the UK having to deal with two sets of rules and regulations and two tax systems, all of which would increase costs and create uncertainty, making it harder to do business across the whole UK.”

An end to everything we know! Uncertainty! Risks! But, um, positively.

“The UK Government’s analysis puts the potential cost per household in Scotland every year of putting a border between Scotland and the wider UK economy, and establishing different regulatory and other systems, at £2000.”

POSITIVITY FACTOR DANGEROUSLY HIGH. RISK OF POSITIVITY OVERLOAD.

“An independent Scotland would have a banking sector more than 12 times the size of its economy – far more than Ireland, Iceland and Cyprus when they got in to difficulties.”

Bigger is better and therefore more positive, right?

“An independent Scotland would have to set up its own legal and regulatory framework for financial services, and its own tax system. This would mean that firms selling pensions, insurance and mortgages in an independent Scotland and in the continuing UK would face extra costs from operating in both markets – costs which could ultimately be borne by individuals (either as tax payers or customers).”

Our face is starting to hurt from all the smiling.

“There are also a number of UK-wide consumer protection and advice bodies – like the Financial Conduct Authority, the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Money Advice Service – which it would be costly to duplicate in an independent Scotland. The financial services industry estimates this would cost millions of pounds.”

We might need to take a Valium in a minute just to damp down the euphoria.

“The UK also has well-funded arrangements which protect deposits in UK banks up to £85,000 if banks get into difficulties. If Scotland became independent, Scottish banks and their customers would no longer be covered by this protection.

An independent Scotland would have to establish its own deposit guarantee scheme under EU law. If one of the two large banks in Scotland were to fail, the costs for compensating depositors would fall almost entirely on the one remaining bank. If the scheme failed, an independent Scottish government could be required to step in. “

Especially if there was also a METEOR STRIKE! or attack by SPACE MONSTERS! at the same time. Which would be super-exciting, and therefore positive!

“Instead of risking these extra costs, firms could decide to focus on only one market. Companies like RBS and Bank of Scotland have spoken of the risks of higher costs in the event of Scottish independence. Others like Standard Life and Alliance Trust are considering how they might relocate parts of their business to England if there were to be a vote in favour of independence.”

Think of all the office space that would become available!

“Independence could lead to reduced choice and higher costs for financial products for people in Scotland, including for mortgages, insurance and pensions. On the basis of independent analysis, the UK Government has estimated that an average annual mortgage payment in Scotland could increase by £1,700.”

An end to the runaway housing bubble! Positive news!

“The institutions we share as part of the UK are deeply embedded into our daily lives. For instance, the National Lottery is played by millions of people across the UK, and the money it raises supports sport and culture across the whole of the UK, with over 50,000 individual good causes in Scotland receiving funding worth £2.5 billion in total since 1994. A new Scottish state would have no automatic right to continue being part of the UK National Lottery.”

“The BBC is one of the greatest of our shared institutions. It is admired across the globe and informs, educates and entertains millions of viewers and listeners at home. In the event of independence, public service broadcasters – including the BBC – would serve the public in the continuing UK.

As a new separate state, an independent Scotland would not automatically be entitled to a share of the BBC. “

“And, as part of the UK, we pool our resources to make a real difference with international aid, as the second largest aid donor in the world and as the first country in the G7 to hit the 0.7% GNI (Gross National Income) commitment.

In the event of independence, an independent Scottish Government would need to apply to join international organisations, including the EU, which would need the agreement of all 28 member states. The Scottish Government’s expectations for the terms and timetable of EU membership are unprecedented, which is why the President of the EU Commission, the Prime Minister of Spain and others have raised concerns.

Instead of gaining from the UK’s EU budget rebate, an independent Scotland would actually have to pay towards the rebate of the continuing UK.”

“In the event of independence, the current boundary between Scotland and the continuing UK would become an international border between separate states.

Both a separate Scottish state and the continuing UK would have to make decisions about how to manage the flow of people and goods across that border. It is likely that over time, differences in tax and regulatory regimes would develop as the two different governments pursued different policies to suit their own circumstances. These differences could be exploited by criminals through smuggling.”

Everyone loves a glamorous, sexy smuggler! It’s like living in a Famous Five book!

So, in summary: there’ll be loads of forms to fill in, everything will cost a fortune, we’ll go bust if the banks collapse, our mortgages will go through the roof, there’ll be no telly, no lottery and no jobs, we’ll be awash in crime, we’ll have to bail out the UK even though we’ll have no money, and all our businesses will be bankrupted or leave.

We don’t know about you, readers, but that’s about as much positivity as we can take before lunchtime. We’re off to do a little happy dance.

Is there no end to the shit this outfit peddle out every week. FFS give us a break, we DONT believe you, if you have to say something that will make us stop and think, make it sensible and worth listening to..or just f**k off and leave us alone..or better still just SHUT THE F**K UP…xxx

Here’s a way of raising funds for the Yes campaign. Put all the above statements in a tombola. Each day, for a fee of, say £1,000 per newspaper (£2,000 for the BBC), sent them whichever statement pops out of the tombola. They can all have the same headline. They can sack their “journalists” as their work is being done for them. Readers get even more pissed off with the constant negativity. Wings gets a daily income.
P.S. a hollowed out model of Alistair Carmichael would be the perfect shape to use as a tombola.

PLUS – how would we live without nukes? Eh? Eh? Everyone knows how convenient they are, just right on our doorstep, and if we got rid of them we’d have nothing to look at. Not to mention that we’d be at risk from intergalactic invasion of dark and sinister forces, the likes of which we have not yet seen, and western civilisation would collapse by teatime. And it would all be OUR FAULT! So, that’s encouraging, isn’t it.

The banks, the banks, the banks – they are too big for your economy which is a problem if they stay. But they will all leave which is a problem.

“Scottish” banks already pay their levies to the UK deposit protection scheme (they have helped fund the damned thing). They will continue to pay their levies into whatever scheme applies after independence.

Of course, there was almost complete banking failure in the UK due to poor regulation. Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown played a key role in designing the poor regulatory framework.

“An independent Scotland would have to establish its own deposit guarantee scheme under EU law. If one of the two large banks in Scotland were to fail, the costs for compensating depositors would fall almost entirely on the one remaining bank”

At least the clowns aren’t saying they’re Scottish only banks now. This one gets my “biggest vote no UKOK lie of the day” mug or is it actually teamGB lying though, as in the USA bailed out “two large banks in Scotland” by several hundred billion dollars but then Obamam in Washington is not run by Westminster either, or is he?

Oh well, I wouldn’t buy a used anything from a pledge signing LibDem like Carmichael after last time.

How on earth could it be a duplication? The UKOKs will no longer be delivering these ‘services’ so where on earth is the duplication? Do these civil service writers understand basic English or are they all former pupils of Joanne Lamont?

BBC …. They just don’t get that anyone anywhere can buy the entertainment programmes which are popular. A HUGE advantage of Independence is we get to bin their awful anti Scottish news and current affairs offerings.

An independent Scotland would have to establish its own deposit guarantee scheme under EU law. If one of the two large banks in Scotland were to fail, the costs for compensating depositors would fall almost entirely on the one remaining bank. If the scheme failed, an independent Scottish government could be required to step in. “

I may be going off at a tangent here but I thought we paid £1 into the Bank of England for every £1 of Scottish currency in use. The last figure I heard was that there was around £4 Billion being held in the BofE as reserve against bank or currency failure.

So in my naive understanding of the situation, when we gain independence and our *ahem* friends down South still refuse a Currency Union then we will remove our £4 Billion from the BofE to be stored in a bank in Scotland. I’ll bet the head of the BofE will be over the moon when that happens.

“The institutions we share as part of the UK are deeply embedded into our daily lives. For instance, the National Lottery is played by millions of people across the UK, and the money it raises supports sport and culture across the whole of the UK, with over 50,000 individual good causes in Scotland receiving funding worth £2.5 billion in total since 1994. A new Scottish state would have no automatic right to continue being part of the UK National Lottery.”

Just out of curiosity here, does anyone know if Cameron has announced when he will return the £100 Million that his predecessor, Broon the Loon, STOLE from the National Lottery. Broon stole the money for his favourite London Olympic games on the premise that the money would be repaid after the games were over. We’re still waiting for the money to be returned!

As a new separate state, an independent Scotland would not automatically be entitled to a share of the BBC. “

I, like many (most) people don’t know much about how public services like item no. 1 (200 bodies …) work. I’ve also heard people in day to day life asking about the cost of all this stuff. Am I being a bit dim and over simplistic on this but doesn’t it work as follows:

Current arrangement: Scotland pays £x billion to UK. UK pays for these public bodies.
After independence: Scotland pays for these public bodies directly.
The only new thing is the initial expense of dividing up existing institutions, plus setting up any new ones that haven’t existed in UK up till now (not sure what those might be).

Where is the extra cost coming from, other than the economy of scale thing, which based on most figures don’t seem to be working for Scotland too well cos she’s making a loss?

Also, on another topic: did anyone see the Herald article about research on Chinese students at Glasgow Caley? As someone who has spoken to several hundred international students on this topic over the last couple of years, I can tell you quite categorically that in my experience students are more interested in world ranking tables and also cost of courses, rather than specifically the ‘prestige’ of studying at a UK institution. I’d be lying if no one had ever expressed this concern, but it’s trumped by international standing of the Uni.

I think they have decided that they have a core of 33% and we have a core of 33%. They are hoping Project Fear will give them more than 50% of the middle ground. Everything they now do is geared towards keeping that 20% or so fearful.

“An independent Scotland would have to set up its own legal and regulatory framework for financial services, and its own tax system.”

Sounds pretty complex – and expensive. I think I would struggle to cope with that myself. I am no stranger to s calculator and spreadsheet but even so, think of the cost! And I’m sure Mrs McDonald at no 35 would struggle with this task also.

The truth is that most people find this kind of thing way beyond their ken, way too complicated and if it’s going to cost millions of pounds that sounds like it could potentially cost each and every taxpayer north of the border a small sum of money. (They usually say billions in scare stories – I assume this is a typo).

But wait a minute. Don’t we have a huge financial sector and a vast array of experts, lawyers, economists and academics to pick a team who are capable of doing a job on this?

And if they did a good enough job could we actually avoid the very expensive financial apocalypse AC is so worried about? And maybe even cut red tape and streamline the tax system so it is more efficient? It might be considered an investment?

I mean, you would struggle to find anyone who thinks financial services are properly regulated at present, or the tax system is perfect the way it is.

Funny thing about independence – we get a chance to do things differently, arrange matters in a better way!

2.5 billion from lottery grants. Total grants given out 31 billion (from lotto website). So Scotland get 8% return (assuming lottery played equally across the UK). Scotland accounts for 8.6% of the population. So that is actually a subsidy to England…

RBS, yes they got a lot of money to support them, unfortunately for the No campaign, just like the No boarders group it is a London registered company…

Do share details of the Vote No Borders campaign with your friends and colleagues. It is important that the voices of the No Voter can be heard.

The VNB team

On Sat, May 3, 2014 at 10:35 AM, Andrew Morton wrote:

I want us to remain part of the UK so that our government can continue to persecute the poor, reward their rich banker friends by selling off publicly owned assets cheaply, drain resources from Scotland and continue to store highly dangerous nuclear weapons close to Glasgow to ensure that London remains safe.

Mr Salmond has argued that Scotland could obtain automatic EU membership, a point that has been disputed by his political opponents as well as the outgoing European Commission president Jose-Manuel Barroso.

Mr Farage was of the view that Scotland would get into the EU easily. “It is a formality,” he said. “They will have anybody. Look at the former Communist countries they have let in where corruption is rife. Scotland is a shining light compared to them

At least there’s good news for UKOK smugglers. I always wanted to be a pirate though, like Johnny Depp, arrrrr, aaaarrrrrr, aaaaaaarrr, shiver me timbers etc plus the greatest ever book about smugglers and pirates was written by a Scottish region author, Treasure Island.

I’m worried that our buildings could maybe fall down on the 19th of September,this possible fact seems to be left oot!
And how much did the £275m in loan guarantees and loans that have to be paid back cost? And how could the finance sector be that big when all the companies have left? 🙂

I am still reeling from the sh*t they said last year. I was a NO . I told everyone vote NO . I watched the news and MSM with slightly tinted glasses and very slowly , I began to question what was being said. To be honest it was such a shock and for probably the umpteenth time in my life I KNEW i was wrong …… ouch.

And the band played on and on and….

I cant be the only one who has changed , and i find it even harder to think the MSM cannot see how damaging the drivel they spout. But they do on and on . They change my mind.

I take great satisfaction talking to my mates about a YES vote for we are many and I get listened to because i was such a supporter of NO. I got a wee pat on the back from a friend who said “welcome back”

No-one really believes the propaganda anymore , most need a wee bit of advice and they make their own choice. The internet has opened many to debates that are not happening anywhere else, sadly many cant affored the phone line charges or the broadband, so word takes a wee bit longer.

Sorry to go on. I served in our armed forces and it was really hard to think we should be independent . I know Uk has many good points but the scares and smears disgust me along with the we cannot do attitude. We most certainly can.

I believe we will win the referendum and thats not fancy thinking. YES voters are everywhere loud and proud .

and the scare and negativity works for us YES voters , they will never learn.

You know this just shows up the problem with this discredited undemocratic union with England. I do not doubt that the authors started off by saying ok, let’s be positive, so what will we list first? Immediately ALL that any unionist can come up with is negative.

As many have said repeatedly, the reason is simple, there is NO positive case for the union, so scare stories is all these unionists have.

To understand just how bereft the union is of positive elements, imagine right now, that Scotland is already independent, and then try to sell the union to yourself. Here’s my pitch:

‘Vote for the union with England, and close your own sovereign Scottish parliament, and hand over all control and taxes to a parliament in the South East corner of England. Of course Scotland will have a vote, but your elected representatives will only make up 9% of the total, so you will always be outvoted on any matter.

It goes without saying that the oil and gas wealth you have will no longer stay in Scotland but come to England – oh and we’ll have the duty from your massive global distilling industry too. Your taxes (you lucky devils!) will be used to pay for major projects in London and the South East of England, like a high speed rail line from London to Birmingham, the upgrade of London’s sewers, or indeed the complete redevelopment of the East end of London and St. Pancras railway station. In any eventuality, Scottish taxpayers will ALWAYS pay more in taxes to London, than the amount being spent back in Scotland – call it a ‘union dividend’. We will of course ALWAYS deny this, and tell you the exact opposite.

In addition, and as a ‘bonus’ your languages, music, history, flag and culture will be regularly ridiculed, and sneered at, whilst you as a nation will be generally patronised and insulted at each and every opportunity.’

That picture is a lot more positive looking than the BT posters I’ve seen in Stevenston (on the side of the Station Bar near the train platform), and Kilwinning (at the corner with the traffic lights near one end of the pedestrian precinct).

Disclaimer: The fact that I’ve posted the locations is NOT AT ALL a hint for someone to pull them down or post a Yes poster over them. Nothing could be further from the truth. Any suggestions of such slander will be denied and passed on to my solicitor for possible legal action and definite mocking laughter. Thank you for reading! Have a nice day! Vote YES!

It’s these so-called, “proud scots”, like Carmichael I despise. Once we are an independent country, him, and his ilk, should never be heard of again. But probably, like a bad smell, they will still be hanging around.

As readers will be aware I was in Annan High Street on Saturday with the local YES South Annandale group when we had a little extra curricular “fun and games.” Previously I have mentioned that I had contacted the Riding of the Marches committee and was *ahem* thinking about writing to the local paper. Well I have some rather frightening news…I’ve just e-mailed the local paper…Oops! 🙂

I know in the overall scale of things this incident on Saturday does not even reach the level of being peanuts but for the locals this could turn out to be something quite huge. 😉

I think I’ve done all I can now until Friday when the local paper comes out…can hardly wait. 😛

Really Sorry Rev to go off topic so early in the stream, but VNB has no less than nine quarter page adverts in the London owned Daily Record. The ads feature supposedly average Scots and their views all opposing independence.

Some quote by the people verge on lets say,put downs,here’s a sample of the quotes by the people. “Separatists, would have us all degenerate into tribalism”. “I’m going to need a passport to see my family down south”.

I don’t even know if the it legal for the Daily Record to allow these adverts to appear, and if its should “Wings” put its own ads in the DR.

Is that pish it ???, is that honestly the best they can do, its just a repeat of all the pish they have threatened us with over the last two months which was a repeat of the pish of the previous two months and soforth.

It quite obvious the Westminster led Bitter Together campaign have nothing new to show us their cludgie is dry, so I suppose it will be nothing but smears from now on.

And a little bittie of OT, if anybody thinks I would trust any of the leadership of the No campaign to speak on behalf of Scotland after our Yes vote, you need your bumps felt. And as for our presenters & journalists throughout both our state media and the MSM who have deliberately tried to run our country and its people down, we will not forget it.

I think what is sobering from a Yes point of view is that despite the No campaign running an appalling campaign of smears, sleep inducing negativity, and absolutely no vision for the future, they still have the support of around 50 per cent of the population in Scotland. That alone should help to keep our feet on the ground.

“An independent Scotland would have to establish its own deposit guarantee scheme under EU law. If one of the two large banks in Scotland were to fail, the costs for compensating depositors would fall almost entirely on the one remaining bank. If the scheme failed, an independent Scottish government could be required to step in.” thought they said we weren’t getting in to the EU? They could make their scare stories consistent.

I was only made aware of this site a couple of weeks ago and since reading it, I have been amazed at my ignorance regarding the opposition to Scottish Independence. I am firmly in the YES camp and I have also, despite being a severely disabled ex-serviceman, put myself at some risk by withdrawing any payments of BBC Licence fee as the BBC has wilfully breached its charter to the people of Scotland. More power to your elbow.

Hmm..not sure about this, Stu. Are you just being sarcastic or something? I mean, there was more than one positive there and, as we know, two positives make a negative. Does that mean three positives turn the negative back to a positive? What about four of them, or five, or…..?

Team Scotland to be set up to discuss the breakaway, after independence, Alex Salmond is in the process of setting up the negotiating team, even thought the Westminster government, have completely ignored the likely event.

Good on you about the BBC licence thing. The less people who pay money to them means less money for them to spend on broadcasting lies and brainwashing propaganda.

I lost my TV reception about three years ago, so contacted them and told them I wouldn’t need a licence, they said fine.
Though strangely I recently seem to be getting a lot of letters from them, threatening to send someone round to check. Been ignoring these and so far nothing else has happened, apart from increasingly threatening letters, which have now dwindled away altogether.

Seems like the BBC has little more than Project Fear style tactics for everything these days.

I remember hearing something a while back about it not even being a criminal offence any more to watch TV without a licence. Anyone here know for sure?

People dying in droves,in hospitals under a Labour government in Wales,the Welsh NHS is on its kness due to Labour party cuts. A possible insight into Ed Milibands future plans, if the impossible occurs and he becomes PM.

It is still a criminal offence but the plan is to make it non-criminal in 2016. No matter. They are in breach of their contract to me in that they have failed to be impartial and not one penny of mine will be used to support the CBI. I fought for my country. I didn’t fight for this gross abuse by the BBC.

Just been to Douglas Alexander’s Better Together video launch for their new agitprop video ‘Best of Both Worlds’ in Edinburgh.

They screened the film then Alexander gave a speech in which he discussed convening a national convention to discuss the promotion of more powers for Scotland in the event of a No vote.

Unusually for Unionist politicians, he agreed to take questions and I was lucky enough to get to ask the first question. My question – as a rep for a film festival – was that many people involved in the film, tv and media industry in Scotland were exasperated at losing cast, crew, technicians and festival staff to London because of a lack of investment in the Scottish media industries, and would he commit the Labour party to devolving broadcasting to Scotland in the event of a NO Vote? This would boost careers for young people and help keep them in Scotland.

His answer? ‘No’.

So much for the national convention and their ‘more powers’!!! This one answer rendered his entire speech utterly redundant!

Anybody out there thinking of taking up a career in media, film or tv, you now know you need to vote Yes!

These people are being paid public money to write this drivel. Lots of public money, OUR money. Then the BBC punt it to us as fact, again using OUR money. They are using OUR money to tell us we are shite. They talk to us like shite, they treat us like shite and they also shite on us on a daily basis. Voting YES will be like curling a big steamer in the middle of Number 10s manicured lawn. I get fed up with all this drivel. STU, you are a legend, I don’t know how you can do this day in day out. One paragraph of Bitters stuff and am boakin’.

No doubt this is true, but the ones who do pre-sessional courses i.e. who study here before they start their subject courses usually get lots of orientation, language lessons that include topics on UK and Scottish culture, other cultural stuff e.g. trips to museums, etc, ceilidh parties, etc. I wonder if these are more direct entry students your wife meets.

On the more general point I made earlier, they don’t seem to be here because it’s the UK, although that is one factor. They are at particular institutions because it’s the best one they could into for their budget and their qualifications, and possibly language level. An additional point though is that the British embassies have not been promoting brand Scotland (certainly that’s my experience) and those that have lived abroad will also have experience of the long long term problem that Britain has been promoted as a synonym of England. Bad for Wales too I would have thought.

If this achieves a NO vote then I truly pity those who vote for the union and then have to live with that thought as the country is slowly choked into submission. They will have to live with what they have done for the rest of their lives.

O/T
On a positive note, I got a chance to chat with Stewart Hosie on Sunday, who turned up at the RIC registration in Charleston, Dundee. He said he would take a look at the probable underestimation of the local benefits that could be expected to result from HS2. I felt quite empowered. Imagine what independence would be like, with such easy access to our elected government. That would keep them on their toes. 😉

I read your blog every day for your analysis and refuting of unionist tripe. I understand how tough it must be to patiently re-refute the same old stories, but this is essential for the “new readers” who haven’t seen the stories refuted before – they are the undecided that we need to convert. So I was surprised and disappointed by the lazy piss taking response to Carmichaels paper – its not your usual standard, its what we have come to expect of unionist media.

“but this is essential for the “new readers” who haven’t seen the stories refuted before”

New readers have a nice eye-catching banner pinned to the top of the front page directing them to a section where all the scares are refuted at length. Nobody’s actually going to read Carmichael’s guffsheet.

Don’t they understand that this is the kind of stuff that’s caused BT to struggle in the last few months?

It’s what I hear from many folk – they are fed up reading this stuff. Borders, currency, Europe and so on – we have heard it all before. And that is the problem for BT. Nothing positive to offer and it has fired all these bullets before. All that’s left are duds and empty shell casings.

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